MCP Tasks (async)/ Why the heck aren't any agents supporting MCP tasks/async?
Conference Context
- Date/time: 2026-06-30 · 3:20pm-3:40pm
- Track/room: Context Engineering · Track 8
- Speaker(s): Cornelia Davis
- Session type/status: session · confirmed
- Track: Context Engineering
- Room: Track 8
- Session type: session
- Status: confirmed
Session Description
The November 2025 MCP spec release introduced tasks, a way to make tool calls in an async manner. But more than 5 months later (an eternity in AI-time) there are still NO clients that support it - not Claude, not Codex, not even goose! I believe there are two reasons: Designing the client experience when there are potentially 1000s of background tasks running on their own schedule and engaging humans at unpredictable times is a challenge. And tasks place new infrastructure requirements on such a client. This talk will share the findings from having built against the tasks protocol and will suggest solutions these problems. Yup, we'll have a working client!
Media Evidence
OpenAI + @Temporalio : Building Durable, Production Ready Agents - Cornelia Davis, Temporal (speaker-match related prior/adjacent AI Engineer video; captions: English auto-captions).
- Source video:
youtube-k8cnVCMYmNc - Slide deck: Dense Slides: OpenAI + @Temporalio : Building Durable, Production Ready Agents - Cornelia Davis, Temporal — 3 visible slide image(s); 3 HTML recreation(s).
- Additional slide evidence: Slides: OpenAI + @Temporalio : Building Durable, Production Ready Agents - Cornelia Davis, Temporal, Reconstructed Slides: OpenAI + @Temporalio : Building Durable, Production Ready Agents - Cornelia Davis, Temporal
- Slide-derived themes for
youtube-k8cnVCMYmNc: note, enough, quota, account, pending, event, types.

Evidence Graph
This evidence graph is generated from currently linked source material: official schedule text, related video pages, cached transcripts, visible slide text, dense/reconstructed slide pages, and AI slide-classification audits.
Media Signals
youtube-k8cnVCMYmNc— 2 slide-derived text signals- Slide-derived themes for
youtube-k8cnVCMYmNc: note, enough, quota, account, pending, event, types. - Evidence links for
youtube-k8cnVCMYmNc: youtube k8cnVCMYmNc, youtube k8cnVCMYmNc slides, youtube k8cnVCMYmNc dense slides, youtube k8cnVCMYmNc reconstructed slides
Agent Reading Notes
Use these signals to refine the synopsis, topic links, people/company context, and method notes. If a source is a related external video rather than an exact official recording, keep it framed as supporting evidence.
Transcript Status
Related video transcript availability: English auto-captions. Treat this as supporting context, not a recording of this exact scheduled session unless later confirmed. Not fetched yet.
People
Supporting Slides
- youtube k8cnVCMYmNc slides — extracted from the related public AI Engineer video.
Slide Evidence
- Slide-only cropped deck: youtube k8cnVCMYmNc dense slides (11 viable slide images).
- Related slide/OCR pages:
- youtube k8cnVCMYmNc dense slides
- youtube k8cnVCMYmNc reconstructed slides
- youtube k8cnVCMYmNc slides
- Slide-derived terms:
temporal,completed,python,tools,alerts,pycache,here,result,weather,openal,instructions,today,york,skies,clear,start_workflow,model,support
Synthesis
Synthesized Breakdown
MCP Tasks (async)/ Why the heck aren't any agents supporting MCP tasks/async? ## Conference Context - Date/time: 2026-06-30 · 3:20pm-3:40pm - Track/room: Context Engineering · Track 8 - Speaker(s): Cornelia Davis - Session type/status: session · confirmed - Track: Context Engineering - Room: Track 8 - Session type: session - Status: confirmed ## Session Description The November 2025 MCP spec release introduced tasks, a way to make tool calls in an async manner. But more than 5 months later (an eternity in AI-time) there are still NO clients that support it - not Claude, not Codex, not even goose! I believe there are two reasons: Designing the client experience when there are potentially 1000s of background tasks running on their own schedule and engaging humans at unpredictable times is a challenge.
Speaker And Company Context
- Cornelia Davis — Principal Technologist at Temporal.
Topics Covered
Derived Links And Source Material
- youtube k8cnVCMYmNc — related YouTube source page.
- youtube k8cnVCMYmNc slides — slide evidence.
- youtube k8cnVCMYmNc reconstructed slides — slide evidence.
- youtube k8cnVCMYmNc dense slides — slide evidence.
Novel Concepts / Clever Methods
- No highlighted novel concept has been detected yet.
Evidence Boundary
This synthesis is based on the official schedule and linked source pages. It should be revisited when exact session recordings or transcript-backed secondary sources are available.